Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Reader Peter Byrne pointed me towards an excellent blog entitled Vintage Wargaming, which recently had a post about wargaming in the Twin Cities in 1966. The post included the following scan, which is from April 17, 1966 issue of the picture supplement to The Minneapolis Tribune:

If you blow up the image above, you'll be able to read the caption, which identifies the participants in this Napoleonics battle, two of whose names regular readers of this blog will definitely recognize.

I like that they are all dressed up, a sort of gentlemen's club in the real sense of the term. I'm guessing there's classical music in the background and everyone has cherry vanilla tobacco in their pipes.

Looks pretty much like what American Civil War wargaming looked like when as a kid I helped my uncle setup for his games in my grandpa's basement in the early 1980's. Ping pong table by day, battlefield by night. :-)

I don't know that they dressed up so much as that they just wore their everyday business or University attire. I have tons of shots of my Dad from this time period and he was always well dressed as well.

How the times have changed.

The Vintage Wargaming site is amazing, who would have figured that there were OSR Wargamers too!!!

The Vintage Wargaming site is amazing, who would have figured that there were OSR Wargamers too!!!

Indeed, there is a vibrant old-school wargaming community. For fans of Grognardia that are interested in seeing more classic style wargaming, could I recommend The Grand Duchy of Stollen - it's rife with eye-candy, the writing style reminds me of James's, and he may be starting soon on a refight of "the Battle of Sittangbad" (which is to wargaming what Keep on the Borderlands is to D&D).

That would be not far from Victoria and Hwy. 36 - see here. Highway 36 probably got widened and walled since this article was written, so the street view doesn't show that much. As I recall from Dave, he said that finding other gamers was something of a hit-or-miss activity back then. This was probably a relatively large gathering for that time. Thanks, James!

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